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Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

covid19.colorado.gov

181–190 of 703 posts

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#181

Surely this is the end of the pandemic? With an estimated 300k+ cases per day here in the UK, that is 10 million this month on top of everyone who has already had it. It’s as though nobody is ready to acknowledge the elephant in the room that Covid is nearly finished. Or am I missing something?

It's been over ever since the vaccines became widely available. After vaccination many of us went back to normal and haven't looked back. Huge bureaucracies just take a long time to change course and some simply refuse to recognize that it's endemic for whatever reasons.

> A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals.

> An epidemic is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time

In no way has "rapid spread of infection disease across multiple continents" ended. The past few weeks should make that a bit more clear. Being vaccinated reduces the negative effects of infection, and may also reduce infectiousness and spread, but it didn't end the pandemic.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#182
post #120

Surely this is the end of the pandemic? With an estimated 300k+ cases per day here in the UK, that is 10 million this month on top of everyone who has already had it. It’s as though nobody is ready to acknowledge the elephant in the room that Covid is nearly finished. Or am I missing something?

I guess it depends on a few things: - how long the immunity gained from having recovered from Omicron lasts - how well that immunity protects against other current (and future) variants of covid - what kind of new strains of covid appears in next several months / years that may replace Omicron - how many people we are able to get vaccinated globally - advances in new and better vaccines becoming available (complete w…

Also:

- how much/long the media keeps the fear drum pounding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI5E8z89c9U

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#183
post #130

Quoted post unavailable.

The vaccines were never purported to be 100% effective, and all the data and information was clear that they had lower effectiveness against Delta, and even lower against Omicron. If people told you that the vaccines would lower your chances of contracting every known major variant and lower your chances of a serious illness, they were right. If they told you that the vaccines were guaranteed to completely prevent ev…

Is it just me or are we getting a lot of new(ish) accounts posting blatant COVID misinformation and/or flamebait lately?

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#184
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid has a death rate hundreds of times higher than a cold. Colds don't make healthy women in their twenties stay up all night coughing so hard their oxygen dips into the 80s. Colds don't cause lung, heart, and cognitive damage that is potentially cumulative. If covid brain fog compounds over time there will be some serious damn consequences.

Actually my wife had a bad cold this summer and she coughed so hard during the night that we had to take her to the ER and she was lacking oxygen (not sure by how much). She is otherwise healthy in her early 30s, though she was pregnant, which might have made it worse. It surprised me, I always thought that colds were harmless.

Yeah, they're really not. I was a paramedic about 10 years ago. Every winter I'd see colds or influenza kill people. (Or at least, initiate convalescence and subsequent rapid death from related issues within a few weeks.) Always though, those were people who were either very old or had COPD (a lung disease). It's a common way that people go out actually. A cold leads to weakness/stress leads to pneuomonia/UTI's/sepsis and then death.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also catch the cold over and over. 1 or 2 colds a year is pretty typical.

Covid has a death rate hundreds of times higher than a cold. Colds don't make healthy women in their twenties stay up all night coughing so hard their oxygen dips into the 80s. Colds don't cause lung, heart, and cognitive damage that is potentially cumulative. If covid brain fog compounds over time there will be some serious damn consequences.

Is there even a single confirmed death from Omicron yet? I've heard of a couple but they turned out to be fake.

This is a highly dynamic situation. Omicron is not alpha or even delta.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#186

I don't think it matters if omicron is ultimately worse or not, nobody cares anymore. I was out visiting a gym yesterday, in an area with sky rocketing cases, and no one was wearing masks. They talked multiple times about how much they cared about health, without even a hint of irony. I was initially put off, but realized that this is just the world we're in. In two weeks we'll find out if the calculus of lower death…

I have a feeling we are gonna want more things to worry about. Done with the pandemic? Let’s latch on to something to make sure 1) You have no kids 2) We keep increasing the power of the government measures 3) Equality meaning we stoop to the lowest level, not bring up the baseline 4) Keep eroding the standard of living. Even if we are a space faring civilization, these people will make it uncool to “pollute” space o…

> No optimism for you!

This is a weird observation to make. Optimism is by far the dominant ideology in our society and has been for well over 300 or so years.

Even currently when you browse mainstream media news postings the vast majority of the articles focus on how mild omicron is and how people should get to back to work.

I'll agree that the media makes plenty of money pedaling anxiety but real pessimism is nearly forbidden in everything from mainstream media to academic philosophy (seriously, Schopenhauer is basically it and he's much more of a buddhist than a true pessimist, the majority of German pessimist thinker remain untranslated in English).

Reacting to any observation of concerning data as "against optimism!" speaks more to a prevalence of hard denial than the rise of true pessimism.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#187
post #162
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been watching over both my parents the past week. Both Omicron cases. "Very mild" is... not accurate. It hasn't hospitalized them, but even without quarantining, they'd be incapable of living anything like a normal life. The common cold it most certainly IS NOT. (Both are double vaxxed and boosted, btw)

Was it worse than a flu for them, or roughly similar?

Normal flu for my dad, a bit worse than that from mom. She basically hasn't gotten out of bed for about 8 days except to use the bathroom.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also catch the cold over and over. 1 or 2 colds a year is pretty typical.

Covid has a death rate hundreds of times higher than a cold. Colds don't make healthy women in their twenties stay up all night coughing so hard their oxygen dips into the 80s. Colds don't cause lung, heart, and cognitive damage that is potentially cumulative. If covid brain fog compounds over time there will be some serious damn consequences.

But are most of those issues with naive subjects? Once everybody is vaccinated or has had it once, the extreme reactions should drop way off.

Re: Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado

#190
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the fact you can catch it over and over. My wife is currently battling Omicron after we both had covid at the start of last year. Fully vaccinated and boosted three weeks ago, caught it anyway. With an infected population this massive mutations happen fast enough to cause a new wave before the old one burns out.

I have omicron right now (4-5 months after 2nd jab, so pretty much no effect from that) and it's just like a common cold (certainly wouldn't call it "battling omicron"). I have zero problems with getting this each year.

Granted this still needs peer review...but you may want to look into this:

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1139035/v1

I hope your recovery goes well and you truly have zero issues.

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